Rodney Wallace of the Portland Timbers keeps his eyes on the ball in Sunday night's game against Vancouver.

By:Monte StewartThe Canadian Press, Published on Sun Oct 21 2012

VANCOUVER—Long after they had gone home, disappointed Vancouver Whitecaps fans still had reason to cheer Sunday night.

The Whitecaps became the first Canadian team to qualify for the Major League Soccer playoffs despite being upset 1-0 by the Portland Timbers in their final home game of the regular season.

The Seattle Sounders came to the Whitecaps’ rescue a little while later as they defeated FC Dallas 3-1. The loss eliminated the Texas club from post-season contention and gave Vancouver the fifth and final playoff berth in the Western Conference.

The Whitecaps (11-13-9) will play a do-or-die game on the road against the defending champion Los Angeles Galaxy in the opening round.

“We’d much rather have taken care of it ourselves in front of our home fans,” said Whitecaps striker Kenny Miller.

Jack Jewsbury scored in the 39th minute for the Timbers (8-16-9) who only had pride to play for.

“We didn’t have, really, too many people who performed to their highest standard,” said Vancouver coach Martin Rennie, who was “surprised and disappointed” with the result.

The Timbers posted their first road victory of the season and also ended a six-game losing streak before a disappointed sellout crowd of 21,000 at B.C. Place Stadium.

Rennie, who usually chooses his words carefully, did not pull any punches as the Whitecaps failed to handle the pressure of a big game.

He was disappointed that Sunday’s loss came after the Whitecaps also lost a crucial home game to Toronto in Nutralite Canadian Championship play that enabled the Reds to prevail.

“At the moment, the team hasn’t quite got the culture that it needs,” said Rennie. “It was the same when we played (Toronto) in the Canadian cup. The team didn’t perform, and I thought we had got over that with the last couple games against Seattle (a 0-0 draw) and Chivas, where we did actually perform under a lot of pressure.

“So I thought that team was ready to do that, but it’s going to have to prove that it’s ready to do that now in the next game (Saturday in the club’s regular-season finale in Salt Lake City.) It’s frustrating, it’s disappointing, because to be successful and get to where we want to get to, players have to be able to play in big games.

“We’ve created big games because of what we’ve done earlier in the season. We need to get to the point where we win big games.”

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.